It might not look like it's going to leap out and grab you, but Beam here launches a soft emotional ambush. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Eight brief fragments in which the ghostly vocal harmonies and echoing piano seem to exist just out of comprehension, as if playing in a distant hall, or half-remembered from a dream. [Jul 2018, p.95]

Merrick's smoke-ring vocals rarely become agitated; the lyrics are unforced, unadorned, conversational to the point of artlessness. ... Yet there is tension here, lurking in the disconnect between Merrick's nonchalant vocals and the simmering volatility of the music. [Apr 2022, p.82]

Molly Hamilton's languorous, seductive vocals further elevate simple Velvets-meets-The-Cowboy-Junkies arrangements, guitar foil Robert Earl Thomas entices with wobbly curlicue riffs and minimalist twang and psych-flute motifs on While You Wait keep things fresh. [Apr 2022, p.87]

No Home record offers few tunes you could whistle, but at it's best Gordon's no-wave din and take-no-shit snarl offer unabashedly militant thrills. [Nov 2019, p.87]

The line between hypnotic and tediously repetitive is occasionally crossed. [Sep 2002, p.94]

Almost exclusively orchestral, this soundtrack works brilliantly as a half-hour suite. [Sep 2016, p.90]

Brainy, jazzy, prescient. [Aug 2021, p.88]

The album's dozen essays zigzag with the same unpredictability as Veirs's vertiginous melody lines, everything united by her compellingly aerated vocal tone and Tucker Martine's deep focus production. [Sep 2013, p.88]

The vibe is six herberts sinking the sherbets inviting you over for banter, yarns, setting the world to rights and all of the fun of rhyme, rhythm, blues and country-rock back in the day. [Jul 2015, p.94]

Beach House's second album in three months underlines just how precision-stylised their frosty, often glacially-slow dream-pop has become. [Jan 2016, p.88]

Despite being awash with regret, this record never falls apart, keeping its integrity, holding itself together with warmth and grace. [May 2026, p.88]

Familiar bittersweet flavours are sensitively tweaked - Looking For You's orchestral surges; Live Learn And Forget's flickering piano - Nada Surf's cathartic heartbursts remain in perfect harmony. [Mar 2020, p.96]

It builds a new stoic eloquence into her vulnerability, even if the stark, birdsong-imbued Darkish drips with Radiohead-like ennui. [Jun 2022, p.84]

What might sound like a depressing work of angsty indulgence is in fact an uplifting record of angular alt-folk. [June 2008, p.108]

If it wasn’t for a couple of unfortunate lulls and longueurs, the odd dubious creative choice, it could easily look Norman Fucking Rockwell in the eye. [May 2023, p.85}

There's still a warm heart beating under all this newly-assembled machinery.

Sits to the right of the likes of Philip Glass and Glenn Branca while outdoing the experimentalism of either Radiohead or Sigur Ros. [Jan 2003, p.98]

Hate is a record of immense ambition and sophistication, a bold vision, a beautifully calibrated meditation on the messy business of life. [Nov 2002, p.98]

Brace yourself. This album is more clinging than quicksand, it is uncompromising, transcendent voodoo. [Sep 2014, p.92]

It's foundations are suitably raw, emotional and, more often than not rhythmically muscular. And yet, by skillfully offsetting this by weaving in strands of Afro-jazz, the pervading mood is one of calming, introspective reverie. [Sep 2016, p.93]

A debut proving the universal emotional weight in teenage preoccupation with romance. One to watch. [Aug 2018, p.96]

Malone draws the listener into the unique interior timbre of the pipe organ, like the idling breath of a large machine at rest; a music of worship, where the object of spiritual veneration is the inner space of the instrument itself. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Anderson's typically earnest, if uncharacteristically earnest, readings of Buddist sutras punchuate proceedings, and a pervading transcendence lingers long after the music has ceased.[Nov 2019, p.89]

When it rocks, it rocks hard, and when it slows down--which it does several times--it's grimmer and more emotional. [Feb 2020, p.84]

Short, spellbinding, almost painfully beautiful album. [Sep 2020, p.96]

A gently breath-taking wonder. [Apr 2024, p.91]

Undoubtedly his definitive statement--not just as a guitarist, but as a songwriter and vocalist. [Jul 2005, p.96]